The present invention is generally related to method and system suitable for electronic-commerce (E-commerce) transactions, and, more particularly, to computer-based method and system for providing guidance to a purchaser to select an appliance that requires venting, and including recommendations regarding a venting arrangement for the appliance.
The assignee of the present invention through one of its business organizations supplies a wide range of appliances to consumers, including some appliances, such as clothes driers, range hoods, bathroom exhaust fans, etc., that generally require venting. That is, some appliances use a venting arrangement or structure to, for example, route airflow from the appliance to the exterior of the house. Thus, in some situations the venting includes directing flow of moist air from the clothes drier. In some other situations the venting includes directing flow of air with cooking residues and/or smoke resulting from food preparation. Regardless of the specific situation, it would be desirable to be able to quickly and accurately determine, prior to selecting a particular appliance and/or venting arrangement, whether an appliance of interest to the purchaser is compatible with a proposed or existing venting arrangement. It will be appreciated that such a determination would be useful to a large variety of parties, such as new home designers, remodeling designers, dealerships, retailers, sales representatives, installers, lending agencies, inspectors, landlords, homeowners, tenants, prospective buyers, etc. Thus, the term purchaser or user as used in the present invention should be broadly interpreted to include parties, such as the above-cited parties, that in one degree or another, supply and/or require services regarding the appliance, and/or the installation thereof.
Although the engineering principles for analyzing and understanding vent designs are generally well-understood in the art, present techniques for conducting such analysis are not necessarily user-friendly, particularly to non-technical users, since such techniques generally require the user to perform calculations or understand engineering tables, plots, equations and engineering terms. Thus, it would be desirable to provide techniques that, based on basic vent parameters supplied by the purchaser, are able to provide accurate and concise recommendations to the purchaser regarding suitability of the venting arrangement relative to the appliance of interest, without involving the purchaser in any computational or analytical tasks. It would be further desirable to be able to quickly and inexpensively communicate the recommendation over presently available communications networks, such as the Internet, Intranets, Wide Area Networks, Local Area Networks, Wireless Networks, etc., so that the purchaser, regardless of his or her geographical location, may take any appropriate action regarding the selection of the appliance and/or venting arrangement. It would be further desirable, once a venting arrangement has been determined to be suitable for the appliance of interest, to be able to issue a trustworthy document that certifies to interested parties of such a determination.